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03 Aug 2015 9:13:42am

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Ben, the problem is that there are not enough people trained in teaching conducting religious education. I appreciate you are. At the NSW public school that my children go to we have a couple of volunteers come in and the younger kids do things like sing songs about Jesus. In the time my kids participated one was offered a retelling of the gospel narrative, unfortunately he tuned out during crucial parts of the story and came home with only narrative elements: a tree was planted and grew (not sure what that bit is about), then baby Jesus was born, then the Romans nailed baby Jesus to the tree. Great! He was disturbed by that image, Roman soldiers nailing babies to trees. The other interesting report was that while for Muslims Jesus is ‘just’ a prophet to Christians he is the son of God – as if that latter expression is itself unambiguous, and as if there has always been a unified teaching in this regard. But further in the hands of my child prophets became something like second class citizens, Mohamed was ‘just’ a prophet (i.e., not comparable to the ‘son of God’). How does Ezekiel fare here?

In general we gave up on it for several reasons: it did not really appear that real education was happening; the people doing it did not seem to have be skilled; the people doing it did not seem to have the impartiality required to conduct a class in a way that facilitated real learning rather than prejudice formation; it was not pluralistic enough (I do not mean that there was not enough non-Christian religion – of course there was not enough, what are you to expect - but as a family with an Orthodox background it was all too Anglican and presented the Anglican vision as the truth of Christianity), it was parochial even in a Christian context. Parochialism and lack of skill are the big reasons why we ceased with it.

I think a good teacher might have overcome some of these problems, but that is not what we got and that is not what many families are getting. If we are going to have religious education in schools we need good teachers, ones that are aware of how they can distort understandings and instil unnecessary prejudices. Not just local committed religious folk who often received their own religious education 40-50 years ago (when Australia was less religiously diverse) and who are worried that kids are not getting enough ‘religion’. I want my children to understand religion, all religions. I also see value in a Christian Religious Education, my religious sensibilities are not strong enough to do this myself. But really what you get is Christianity presented as if the Anglican Church were the only Church – at least that is what we got. Christianity presented as a monolith. That’s bad education and parochial vision in my book.